Some of these facilities do generate a significant portion of their own electricity via various means. It’s not like that amount of energy is just sitting out there on the grid waiting to be used. Somebody has to generate it and if you’re already investing millions in rectifiers, batteries, and other data center power systems, why wouldn’t you consider taking it a step further?

Technically it was invented by Xerox then developed for the military. The 1990s version of the internet was more akin to what you described but I wouldn’t say it was designed with that in mind.

What are you talking about? Things seem to be rapidly deteriorating to me. There are no problems being rectified.

They manufacture a significant portion of the transport hardware that makes up the backbone of the internet. They also just acquired Infinera who had another sizable chunk of that market.